shoestring

Definition

A culinary cut where vegetables or potatoes are sliced into long, thin strips resembling shoestrings—or in non-cooking contexts, an impossibly tight budget. When a recipe calls for shoestring cuts, you're basically making fancy matchsticks. The phrase "on a shoestring" perfectly captures startup culture: doing impressive things with resources as thin as your patience.

Example Usage

The restaurant served shoestring fries so thin and crispy they disappeared before you could Instagram them.

Source: Common culinary terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

drop the check

To present the bill to a table, usually done strategically to encourage lingering customers to vacate during busy service. The polite version of 'please leave now.'

🍳 Food / Culinary

Advanced

Bain-Marie

A fancy French term for putting one pot inside another pot of hot water. Essentially, you're giving your food a hot bath because apparently direct heat is too confrontational. Marie must have been very particular about her chocolate tempering.

🍳 Food / Culinary

Intermediate

velouté

One of the five mother sauces, made by thickening light stock with a blonde roux, resulting in a velvety-smooth base for countless derivatives. French for 'velvety,' because subtlety has never been French cuisine's forte.

🍳 Food / Culinary

Intermediate

kill it

To deliberately overcook something beyond the requested doneness, usually because a customer has questionable taste or the cook seeks passive-aggressive revenge. The culinary nuclear option.

🍳 Food / Culinary

Advanced

panade

A paste of starch and liquid used to bind forcemeats and maintain their texture, preventing your pâté from turning into expensive cat food. The unsung hero that keeps delicate preparations from falling apart both literally and metaphorically.

🍳 Food / Culinary

Advanced

blanc

In culinary terms, a white sauce made from fat, broth, and vegetables used for braising, not to be confused with the cosmetic kind or the wine. It's one of those French cooking fundamentals that sounds intimidating but is basically fancy butter soup. The liquid foundation for making tough cuts of meat remember they're supposed to be tender.

🍳 Food / Culinary

Translate This Term

See “shoestring” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Beginner

baby-speak

The linguistically questionable phenomenon where fully grown adults adopt toddler speech patterns, complete with simplif...